The Lunatics Are Taking Over The Asylum….

As you get older, unfortunately there comes a time when you get invited to funerals rather than weddings. None are particularly pleasant to go to as obviously you`re paying respect to a person who you know you are never going to see again but one in particular stands out for me.Back in May 2011 a friend of mine Chris McManus was working for a construction company in Nigeria.Not sure how long his contract was but he`d been home on leave for a couple of weeks in April and had managed to catch up with a few of his friends and he was telling us all how he loved Nigeria and the people there.He went back to Nigeria and none of us ever saw him again.I`d known Chris for about 10 years,he was about 16/17 yrs old when he came to work in the kitchen at the pub I was working in and he was a lovely lad,stammered a bit when he was nervous but he had big plans and when he was 18 he went for a gap year working in New Zealand and obviously didn`t come back to work in the pub when he got back.Instead he went to Uni and got a degree and became a quantity surveyor, which led him to get work in Nigeria.In the time I`d known him I`d seen him change from a teenager into a (forgive the cliche) lovely young man.Still saw him sometimes out and about so you can imagine the shock that everyone who knew him had when we switched Sky News on in March 2012.He`d been kidnapped in May 2011 by the terrorist group Boko Haram. You know the ones, they kidnapped all those schoolgirls 5 months ago only the piece of paper that Michelle Obama was holding #Bring Back Our Girls doesn`t seemed to have worked.So yes, these scum have held Chris and an Italian Franco Lamolinara for months before Special Forces went in.They were always being moved around which made it difficult for anyone to help rescue them.It didn`t end well and Chris and Franco were killed by their captors….28 years old.Wrong place, wrong time.The funeral was, as you can imagine, heartbreaking.Even Chris`s boss in Nigeria was there, and it was all I could do to stop myself from behaving like an uncontrollable banshee.But two years on and the lunatics are demanding as part of the ransom for the girls that Chris`s killers are released.The government says it can`t happen.This will not end well….